


tongue of the sun and moon

by ZPumpkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, fantasy languages, fun level 13 abilities, not actually that graphic i just dont know how graphic is graphic, spoilers episode 58, technically in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 10:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZPumpkin/pseuds/ZPumpkin
Summary: Starting at 13th level, you learn to touch the ki of other minds so that you understand all spoken languages. Moreover, any creature that can understand a language can understand what you say.Or: Beau accidentally breaks the concept of language privacy.





	tongue of the sun and moon

The first time she notices it there’s a giant set of serrated insect mandibles locked around her right arm, across her chest, binding the arm to her body. The damn things had just burst up around them as they walked between a mountain range and the edge of the purple forest. And now the head, and literally just the head, of one is trying to kill her from the grave. So that sucks. But if she hadn’t taken the hit there Caleb would just be bleeding out. Instead she’s just bitching in the dirt while she waits for Yasha and Jester to finish the last of ‘em and pry this thing off her. 

Caleb’s got the leg of one through his leg, pinning him to the ground, but he at least could lob firebolts until the bugs got too far. Beau’s just been waiting, complaining, and some light bleeding. Breathing’s a bit of an issue.

“I have this spell that lets me shield myself,” Caleb says, voice tight, sweating despite the cold air. “I realize I do not use it often but it’s very protective.”

“Thanks for telling me now, dude. But if that thing could hit me it was definitely gonna hit you even with that.” She considers his coat and scarf and, she’s not one to criticize armor choices, but, “You should use that a fuckload more. It’s way too easy to hit you normally.”

Caleb shrugs one shoulder and inspects the leg in his leg with a very detached interest. Oh, shit fuck what if it hit an artery? Beau uses her legs to pull her next to him and peels back the torn pants legs to double check. Not an artery but that’s a lot of blood there. On and from both of them, really, but she’s fucked until help arrives. She can do a one-handed tourniquet. 

“What are you doing Beauregard?” Caleb asks and winces violently when she rips his scarf off. She slaps his hand away when he pokes at her, wraps the scarf twice tight above the puncture and bullies Caleb into holding it so she can tie it off. Not perfect but less likely he’ll bleed out this way.

And she’s bored again. A little lightheaded. Beau shifts back and forth like a rocking chair to see which way of sitting doesn’t get her cut. It’s none. Asks, “Know what those things were?”

“Mmh, Kruthik I think. I found a picture of one in my… previous studies of threats to the Empire.”

There’s a blast of pink-green energy and the bulk of one goes spinning into the air. She tries to cheer but it’s wheezy and hurts like a dozen fucking razors stabbing her. “Think we can tell them to fuck off so we don’t have to kill them?”

Caleb twists his mouth like he’s thinking of it. “They don’t seem intelligent. Maybe some kind of scent or sound would drive them away.”

Odd. Beau could’ve sworn she heard the things chittering about “Intruder” and “Protect the queen.” But that could be blood loss and just hearing crap in the mass of white noise they make. She hears odd shit in silence sometimes; adventurer’s paranoia, kinda given with their work.

“I don’t believe I’ve thanked you for, uh, landing in this predicament to help me,” Caleb says and gestures to the whole mandible-blood-hurting thing they’re stuck with.

“Eh,” Beau shrugs, “It’s what me and Yash are for, generally.”

Caleb doesn’t look super comfortable with that statement but carries on, “Still, thank you, _meine…_ ” A weird pause, a look around. The group is coming back but still like 200ft out and he relaxes just a tad. “You are _ein echter Freund._ ” 

Beau’s head snaps to him so fast her neck cracks a few times and the mandible bites in deeper. Cause she heard Caleb’s usual Zemnian, she knows what Freund meant in general, but she also hears it make perfect sense. ‘A true friend’? That, gods, he’s still so fucking cagey about calling any of them simply friends. That was… that was meant to not be understood, she gathers from Caleb’s confused look which falls back into his usual anxiety soon enough. And she’s not sure how she did understand it. The words didn’t change when she heard them, but she just knew that’s what he had meant. Some not-foreign but new buzz in her head going ‘oh of course.’

She gets distracted immediately by Jester and Yasha crowding around her, watching the pull of their muscles as they pulled the mandible apart and let her out. Then by Jester freaking out over the admittedly horrifying wound it had left and nursing her for the next hour. Then they were going to sleep and she had mostly forgotten about it, blaming it on blood loss and a hopeful mind.

The wound, though healed, itches like a bitch so Beau’s still awake when Caleb shuffles near Nott, who is also very awake and staring longingly towards the horizon. If Beau had to guess, towards Nicodranus where they had teleported Yeza with enough gold and divine messages sent to get him transport to Alfield. Hopefully. Quietly, but it’s a small bubble and Beau’s curiosity is incorrigible, he says, “Jester can check in the morning, but we will get you home soon, _Liebling._ ”

What Beau had thought was just a nickname for Nott shifts itself to ‘favorite,’ and she kinda gets hints it could mean other things but that’s the meaning that sticks out to her. And Nott doesn’t react any different than the other times Caleb’s said that, with a kind of friendly acceptance that mostly means she doesn’t understand it fully. 

“I know,” Nott says. “But not until we get you what you need.”

They lapse into Caleb’s brand of abrupt silence and Beau turns over, breathing like she’s trying to meditate. She’s fucking exhausted and questions can wait until morning.

—

The new shit doesn’t come up for a few days. They all speak common and so do most races, so it’s just… common. And with that joke in her head Beau mulls this new ability over. She can’t just politely ask someone to speak a different language without being weird as fuck, and she thinks Nott wouldn’t mind having another talk in Halfling just to annoy Fjord but Beau already knew that one. That wouldn’t prove anything.

Late in the day, an hour or two before they would camp, walking the lower slope of a mountain, they find a big ass tablet-shaped rock. A little taller than Caduceus, broken at the edges, buried at an odd angle into solid stone. It looked like it’d been launched or thrown a long time ago, the rock now sealed around its lower half and the odd scrawls on its surface weathered down to outlines. 

Caleb sits down to start doing his languages spell, so Beau ignores him and follows Yasha to the tablet. She wants to know what kind of stone this is that the impact didn’t just explode it. Yasha, though, runs a finger through some of the more legible marks and hums, low, a little angry or passively upset. “It’s Abyssal.”

“Oh shit,” Jester says, running up to look over Beau’s shoulder. “What’s it say? Is it like the demon well again? I don’t really want to do that again.”

Beau feels Jester’s head shift to look behind them, towards Caleb. Good to know that trauma’s still crawling up all their asses. She should talk to them. Maybe at the same time just to rip it off nice and painfully quick. Besides her Yasha slowly reads through the script, mouth moving softly but silent. At her rate she’ll finish when Caleb completes his long ass spell.

Instead of waiting, Beau fishes for some paper and charcoal and kneels to get the lower text so Caleb can double check. Or tell them. Yasha’s face keeps falling the longer she reads and none of them are good at sharing hard shit. But Beau wants to know, so she presses the paper to stone, holds the charcoal up, and accidentally completely understands the language. She blinks at it, just to see if it will stop, and when it doesn’t she pretends to get the charcoal print while she just reads it.

And oh boy it’s a terrible read. Harsh, overbearing statements of torture your enemies with hooks and chains, enslave the weak, breaking people’s wills. It’s like some of the vows in divine scriptures but the polar fucking opposite of the nice ones. Lorenzo’s demonic, crooked smirk flashes in her mind and the charcoal shatters in her hand.

“Uh, Beau? You got a little weirdly pale there.” Jester says, slowly putting a hand on the monk’s shoulder. 

Yasha’s glancing down at her oddly, too, with an unsettling amount of distance in her gaze. Memories, Beau guesses. She might look the same. Fuck today, apparently. “Uh, I’m good,” Beau says. “Just got a bit of vertigo, bending down weird. Might be that bug bite acting up.” And that’s a fucking blatant deflection but it works well enough. Jester’s pressing at her stomach and arm, playing along once she notices that even the scar of the wound is fading. 

It’s only when Caleb comes with his spell ready, spends about 10 seconds on it, and quits that Jester gets extremely suspicious of them. Beau’s doing her best to act dumb because Abyssal is not something she knew a week ago and Caleb is not handling an upset Jester effectively.

Yasha says something in her silvery, musical language, the one she said was Xhorhassian, a single word so at odds with the ripping echoes of the Abyssal in Beau’s head. She has no idea how to even make that noise with her mouth until, a second later, she absolutely does, knows what Yasha says to Jester. “ _Boundless Hope_ , it is not worth our time. Abyssal never is.” It’s like a title and a declaration and a promise in one. It’s a fucking lot to just suddenly know how highly Yasha holds Jester. Watch out privacy, Beau is just breaking into every conversation now. Caleb, who knows this language - Celestial, Beau realizes – turns away with an embarrassed blush when Yasha glances at him.

But the word, maybe the sheer beauty of it’s sound, distracts Jester. She spends the next few hours asking Yasha to teach her words, and Yasha does. She picks common things, which is ridiculously distracting. Even hearing Yasha say the Celestial for grass is wonderful to listen to, every word somehow a self-contained song. It puts everyone in a good mood as they make camp under the constant rain-dreary sky in a foreign land.

And Beau, whose apologies come with curses, whose singing voice was once described as ‘A crow trying to kill someone,’ takes first watch alone and stares into the night for a long while. She sorts through new words in her head, ones Yasha said and many she didn’t. Picks one. Tries to say it and stops herself. She’s never said a beautiful thing in her gods damned life. Does fucking up Celestial count as a divine offense? She looks back into the bubble, the huddle of bodies, a space between Yasha and Jester waiting for her, Nott curled deep into Caleb’s chest, Fjord wrapped up in sleep-cuddler Caduceus’s arms and not seeming to mind.

She says the word for _Family_ and it sounds so committed, so… accepting that it damn near breaks her heart. And she hears a gasp, a pair of mismatched eyes shoot open in the night.

Well. Shit.

They’re both frozen, Beau in goggles, Yasha’s eyes alight in the dark. Beau does a slightly panicked, nervous finger salute, pretending she hadn’t done whatever she’d just done. It strikes her, she knows the words and a sense of meaning, but has no cultural context. She could’ve just proposed or some shit to all of them.

Yasha, staring at her, says “ _Family,_ ” back and it’s so small, all hope and unspoken sorrows, and Beau straight up chokes on her damn heart leaping straight into her throat. Then Yasha nods and closes her eyes. 

Beau’s just… not gonna sleep tonight. That sounds like a good idea.

In the morning, Yasha is not shy or awkward or lost like Beau is. She looks right at Beau, practically into her fucking shitty soul, and clasps her arm. Then Yasha turns to Caleb and calls him _Family_ too and. Yeah. To his credit he doesn’t have a mental breakdown but he refuses to be within 60 feet of Yasha for the next day. Frumpkin keeps her company, though, and Beau thinks that’s a good sign.

—

Yasha doesn’t bring up the Celestial thing. Beau doesn’t bring up her new knowledge. Life goes on, which means nearly dying on a daily basis. Tonight’s fun is an ambush by a thing that could be human, if it didn’t have massive wings, almost as big horns, red skin, and wasn’t like 20 feet tall with a barbed tail. It keeps laughing in that rough, kinda intense language Jester speaks. Hasn’t spoken in a long time. This guy’s just repeating shit about eternal torment and fire.

Beau thinks the tail is an interesting choice. The barbs are near as long as her whole arm and the tears and punctures they put in her keep hurting. She’s good at handling poison, these days, but whatever’s on this tail feels like lava seeping into her body. She tries her best, cause as long as she’s up it can’t focus on Yasha, but every second hurts worse than the last. She blinks and she’s on a knee, coughing blood, and looks up to see the thing turn to her with a wicked, fanged smile. 

“ _Ah, you first then,_ ” it hisses and raises a claw. 

Beau’s hands shake around her staff, raised to take the blow, and she knows that’s not gonna work. She’s fucked, and this was bound to happen someday. Hopefully they’ll have enough diamonds at the end of this to get her back.

She gets pushed so hard she thinks the creature hit, but no. Jester’s in her spot, shield up, the metal catching most of it but the long fingers carve down her cheek and neck. The air goes colder and jagged spears of ice jam into the thing’s hand, Jester screaming back at it, “ _You can’t take her from me!_ ”

Then the pain spikes through Beau again and she blacks out, proud she got to see Jester really let go once.

She wakes up still in a stupid amount of pain and immediately jerks to check her chest. No diamond dust. Huh. Things went pretty well, then, except moving hurts so much she’s near paralyzed for a minute.

She hears Jester say, from very close and a little above, “You should maybe not move for awhile.”

“Got it,” Beau says. Whimpers, really.

She hears the others stomping around, Fjord talking about how to harvest the thing, Caleb explaining what he knows of it. Horned devil. Well ain’t that literal. When she tries to push up and look Jester gently, but firmly, keeps her laying down.

“This’s boring,” Beau whines

“I’m sorry,” Jester says, and she sounds it. “We’re out of healing for today, so we’re waiting until you feel better. Caleb said he might have a thing but, like, no one knows what he’s talking about.”

Beau tries to listen to the others, but her head feels like an ugly mix of bruised and hungover and the afternoon sun burns her eyes. Concentrating on anything wears her out quickly. Eventually she gives up and rests her head on Jester’s lap, tuning in to a quieter but closer noise. Jester’s trying to…speak Celestial. Trying is a big part of it, but it still sounds nice and distracting. Beau even picks out a few of the words she’s attempting. Words for roses, trees, clouds.

“Your pronunciation is, um,” Beau says and stops to look for a good word. Weirdly there is one in Celestial for this exact thing, it’d just mean fuck all to Jester.

“Little shitty, I know,” Jester says, cheerful. “But it sounds much nicer than Infernal, yes?” A pause and Beau can picture the curious head tilt. “How would you know how Celestial sounds, Beau? Have you been spending some time learning with Yasha?”

“Put your eyebrows down,” Beau mumbles, nuzzling against Jester’s stomach. It’s better than most pillows, which might be the exhaustion. “I know things. And your Infernal is great.

Jester hums and asks, “Even though the big mean devil spoke it, too?”

“You’re not him, you’re you.” Beau wriggles her hand up to tap at Jester’s hand. “C’mon, sing me something your mom sang to you.” Not like she has any from her fucking parents.

“Okay okay, here, this one is about a big brave knight who stops a devil lord, and I’d sing it in common but it translates kinda weirdly.” And Jester begins a soft little… rhyme is not the word. Infernal does not rhyme. Every word is distinct, some hissing, some biting, some curling like flames on paper. But it’s Jester, and Beau’s too near sleep to pretend she doesn’t enjoy her voice. Somehow her accent carries through the language. And, fortunately, her new translation thing doesn’t require her to focus much at all. 

It’s a nice song, in theme, but some of the Infernal concepts are a lot to parse. ‘ _Swears to burn a hundred lives in her name,_ ’ ‘ _Would follow into the Ninth and never look back,_ ’ among others. It’s romantic in some sense. Mildly threatening to most others. It’d be incongruous with sweets-loving trickster Jester if Beau hadn’t seen her face demons and giants, afraid yes, but with a little spark of ‘don’t you fucking dare’ that Beau admires.

She sort of lulls out, not fully asleep but her body loose and heavy. Distantly she hears Caleb go, “Ahah!” and a chorus of impressed noises. 

Jester slowly picks her up in a bridal carry, whispering in her ear, “Come on, Caleb made a door for us.” A confused and amused giggle, and softer, “Get well, _One I’d sell my soul for._ ” 

As far as compliments go, that’s intense. And would be a terrible waste of Jester to do so. And Beau’s still not meant to understand all these words they use that normally fly over her head. She wonders how long they’ve done this, all these affections in their languages so they work around her thorns and bitterness. 

She’s placed on a soft bed, and where did that come from? But she’s out before the door ever closes to this room, questions left for later when everything didn’t hurt.

—

When Beau wakes up she spends an hour looking around a fucking mansion that she supposes Caleb made. And she hates big houses, manors, castles, all of it. Reminds her of home. But this one is distinctly Caleb, the foyer cramped and cluttered with simple furniture, a picture of Frumpkin on a wall, undecorated wooden doors with charcoal name tags leading into rooms he copied from the Lavish Chateau. It’s not fancy, it’s a little chaotic, but it looks lived in. How much of it is memories from his home she will never ask. 

In her exploration she bumps into Fjord, who looks dumbfounded as servants bring a feast of fish to his spot at a dinner table. She’ll talk to him later. One of the blue ghost things gets Beau a solid mug of ale, about as cheap and shit as they traditionally order and its perfect. She downs it while she looks for Caleb’s room, which is for some reason not on the upper floors.

She finds it on an offshoot of the basement stairs, which is weird, but if the guy wants to live in the basement of a mansion he created who’s she to stop him. He answers after a minute of knocking.

“You should be resting,” Caleb says. She looks over his shoulder and his room has a bed and a fucking library of books. 

“I feel fine,” Beau lies. The barb wounds haven’t fully closed yet. “You got any books about like, linguistics, what words in other languages mean to the culture, that kinda shit?” Caleb blinks at her. That’s fair, her academic interests are few and tend to involve crime. “Let me start over. I sorta know every language and if I’m gonna offend someone I’d like it to be on purpose. So.”

Caleb stares, blinks, and goes to sit on his bed. “ _Was?_ ” he asks.

“Yeah, like that,” Beau says, “You just said Zemnian for what.”

“You could have just guessed that,” Caleb retorts. “It would not be hard with context clues. Here, _verstehst du mich_ , what does that mean?”

Beau rolls her eyes. “’Do you understand me’? Like I couldn’t have guessed that, too.”

They have a mini staring competition. Caleb says, “ _Backpfeifengesicht._ ”

Now Beau laughs. ‘A face in need of slapping,’ wow, good thing her parents didn’t know Zemnian. “Rude.”

“I don’t understand,” Caleb says, apparently defeated. “When did this happen? How? Did you pick up any magic, there is a spell that lets me do similar but, no offense, you… do not have arcane ability. At all.”

“I’m aware of that, mansion maker.” Beau leans against the door frame, chewing her lip. “Started about a week ago. Maybe before the bug thing. By the way, I’m pretty sure they could talk but only like 4 words. Now it’s like, when I hear someone speak it, or read it, I just… get it. But I don’t think I get all of it, like what certain words really mean.” She scratches her neck, trying to think of an example that’d work without revealing what’s she already overheard. “Here, you know Celestial, like book learnt. This mean anything special?” And Beau says the word for _Faith_. Seems like it’d be an important word. It rings of devotion, sacrifice, a give and take like what she’s seen in Caduceus.

Caleb repeats essentially what she thought it meant. Because Beau wants to be sure, she repeats the test with a few other Celestial words, then with some Zemnian, and if she’s not 100% on her guess then she’s about 98%. 

So, yay, she won’t say something super fucking weird and piss off her friends. Also, oh no, cause Yasha and Jester’s phrases mean a shit ton that she hasn’t really processed yet.

The guilt must be pretty obvious because Caleb sighs and comes closer to pat-pat-pat her shoulder. “I am guessing you overheard some interesting phrases.”

“Is that an invasion of privacy?” Beau asks. “I can’t turn this shit off, it’s just there, and I thought I might have gotten a very weird and specific kind of crazy. And they were saying the words to me, just… not actually?” To be fair, Beau might have done it too if Deep Speech didn’t sound like a nightmare and Nott didn’t know Halfling.

“I do not think any of us are innocent of invading privacy. But perhaps it would be best if you told the others, so there would be no miscommunication.” Caleb drops his hand and leaves his room, pausing on the stairs. “If you… heard anything I have said in Zemnian to you, I did mean it. Even if I did not expect you to know.”

Beau can’t quite look at him right now so she prods a stray book with her foot. “Yeah. _Ein echter Freund_. You too.”

She hears his short, sort of surprised gasp. “Uh, Ja. That is good. We have this mansion for 15 more hours, if you want to talk to everyone.” And he’s gone.

—

It takes 3 more hours before Beau has managed the courage and told everyone to go to the foyer. She’d almost said dining room, since that’s where family meetings tend to happen, but she doesn’t like the precedent. Everyone’s sprawled in the many couches and chairs lining the walls of this rustic yet oversized entry. Beau wants to just lounge on a loveseat or something but her nerves make her stand and pace. 

Everyone’s looking at her.

“So, hi,” Beau starts. “This is really fucking weird to explain and I don’t wanna do 20 questions again. I got a new thing. Ability, I guess. And…” Most everyone looks interested, except Caleb, and maybe Caduceus but he’s hard to read. She’ll start with him. In Giant she says, “ _I can speak this now. Oh wow this hurts my throat._ ” It feels like she had to gargle rocks to get the consonants out.

In his deep voice, apparently unaffected by the roughness, he replies with a pleased smile, “ _Oh, isn’t that interesting. I take it this is recent?_ ” 

Now everyone’s really looking at her, which is not a fucking improvement. “Uh, last week. I sort of know every language, Caleb can answer any questions about if its magical cause its not, not really a magic type of girl. Just, letting you know, in case you want some private conversation you can tell me to fuck off, I get it.” 

Yasha glances to Caleb, then to Beau, a half certain smile on her face. In Celestial, “ _So you meant it?_ ”

In for a copper in for falling face first into the dragon’s hoard. “ _Yeah._ ”

Yasha’s up and out of her chair, crushing Beau into a hug. It’s a short one, but it’s a lot of physical affection for either of them. She sets Beau down with a few more bruises and takes her seat, pale skin lit brilliantly red now. 

“Okay!” Jester says, looking between Yasha and Beau, “how do I get that, I wanna know what you’re talking about!”

“Can’t help you, Jess, sorry,” Beau says. She takes a seat opposite the rest, looking from vague-face-area to vague-face-area. “That’s, uh, that’s it. You got any questions I’m here. Otherwise I want food and a drink.”

“I think I’m good,” Fjord says. “Thanks for tellin’ us, I’ll get the drinks.” As he passes her he ruffles her hair until she slaps at him. His next words are Orcish, low, a little growly, even his accent changes to something oddly smooth on top of the language. “ _Good talk, War-sister._ ” 

Oh. Bound in blood, defenders of each other, trusted in arms. She can work with that, that’s badass. “ _Bring me something strong, War-brother,_ ” she shoots back. 

“This is really annoying you guys,” Jester complains, slouched and arms crossed.

“I’ll translate unless someone doesn’t want me to,” Beau says, “which is putting a lot of conditions on the whole multilingual conversation shit. I’m gonna need a contract or something for this.” Then, Infernal and with a wink to Jester, “ _But, now we can have secret conversations about the others._ ” 

Jester gasps pretty loudly, but her tail’s gone very still, which isn’t the best sign. Nott’s the next one to talk, though, going straight to Halfling. “ _I don’t like Goblin. All the good things are also huge insults. But if you want to talk like this I wouldn’t mind._ ” Beau nods, and Nott lifts her flask in a little salute. “ _I’m getting bacon then, see you later Hearth Guard._ ” And she leaves, followed closely by Caleb, Caduceus, then Yasha.

That is not as cool as Fjord’s name for her, but the meaning is nice; the one who holds back the monsters, who hurts so the family does not. Maybe a little sad, but she hopes it’s accurate. 

Then it’s just Jester and Beau on opposite sides of a room. Jester seems to be thinking hard about something, staring in to a middle distance, and Beau gives her a few minutes before standing. “I don’t know if the bacon has a limit here, but Nott might eat it all before I get there.” No answer and Beau walks a few steps closer, starts in common, “Are you,” then switches to Infernal, “ _Are you whole?_ ” Weird way to ask, but devils aren’t very thoughtful, and Jester might appreciate the privacy of this language. 

“ _You don’t have to say it back,_ ” Jester responds. “ _I know it’s a lot and I thought you didn’t know but turns out you did, and maybe you didn’t even hear, you were really out of it at the time. But if you did hear, I meant it._ ”

Oh, yeah that one. Beau’s gone through her head in the hours before this meeting and One I’d sell my soul for is literally the highest of praise in Infernal. The one for whom you’d give up every power and every resource to keep, who you’d trade eternity for if needed, who you’d defend from your masters despite the consequences. Beau can not imagine many true devils have ever said it and she kinda thinks Tieflings made it up for themselves. For little blue babies in gentle red arms. 

Beau looks down at her scarred arms, her calloused thieving hands, bones that break bones and break in turn cause that’s all they know. And she can’t really think of a better purpose for this bruiser than to keep Jester here, safe, alive, with everything she has. Ideally keep all of them, but she’s pretty sure none of the Nein would fault her for prioritizing Jester.

“Well,” Beau says, slow. Jester has twisted herself up in a weird, tense statue pose, waiting like she might burst if she moved. “ _Jester, you’re the one I’d sell my soul for._ ” 

And Beau’s pretty sure Jester just used a dimension door to tackle her instantly, a mass of blue and dress and sugar scent falling right on top of her. There’s a stream of muffled “Thanks yous,” mixed with “Sorry” as an arm smacks into Beau’s face until Jester has her pinned in a fully body hug. Jester’s near vibrating on top of her, a horn jabbing into Beau’s clavicle every so often. 

“Ah, not that I mind much, but they could eat all of the food without us,” Beau says.

“Nope!” Jester counters, “I stole a bunch and stored it in my room in case you couldn’t get out of bed!”

“Sooo… we’re just gonna hang here until some point in time, huh?” 

Jester nods. “You’re stuck with me forever now!” she says with such glee that Beau can ignore her arm falling asleep.

“Guess you’re stuck with me too, then. At least until I get hungry,” Beau jokes, and Jester whines and clings even harder. When Nott comes back in to see where they are, it’s somehow not the most embarrassing time she’d been caught with a girl. It’s pretty nice, even when Nott takes the opportunity to put some magic mansion flowers in Beau’s topknot


End file.
